Helix Semiconductors’ HS200 DC-DC MuxCapacitor Power IC is a new type of voltage divider that can play an integral role in a distributed power architecture (DPA) system. It provides a high-efficiency approach to reducing the input voltage while delivering a 15-W drive for external point-of-load (POL) converters. To see how the HS200 fits in a DPA system, we first need to look at a typical DPA system.

Current DPA systems use a bus converter to deliver an unregulated, stepped-down voltage of 9.6 to 14 V to power a POL (Fig. 1). This bus converter is ideal for a loosely regulated 12-V dc intermediate bus architecture that powers a variety of downstream non‑isolated, POL regulators. Both the bus converter and POL are well-suited for applications that use a 48-V (±10%) input bus.